The Company and Business Names (Miscellaneous Provisions) Regulations 2009

With the migration to the Companies Act 2006 there have been a number of key changes with regards to company name conflicts and duplication. Companies House have now imposed a more rigorous procedure on validating the company name for a proposed incorporation or name change request.

Traditionally Companies House have disregarded spaces, punctionation and a few additional words such as 'company' and 'the' when cross checking the name against the current register. With the October 1st changes, Companies House now incorporate a much larger sample of words that are disregarded in the name approval process. Some of the more common additions are listed below:

UK

GB

SERVICES

GROUP

HOLDINGS

INTERNATIONAL

For a full exhaustive list of words that now effect the name approval process please refer to Statutory Instrument number 1085 of the The Company and Business Names (Miscellaneous Provisions) Regulations 2009.